


Counting Bodies Like Sheep

by SouthernMoonshine



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Capture, Gen, Gore, Gross, Horror, Off-screen Deaths, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 13:25:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15268446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernMoonshine/pseuds/SouthernMoonshine
Summary: What if Rook had known there were others captured in the Ke-Han dungeons?





	Counting Bodies Like Sheep

**Author's Note:**

> A small short full of pointless gore and torture, dead bodies and rotten injuries, and Rook being too shell-shocked and fevered to thoroughly process it all.
> 
> Title from [Counting Bodies Like Sheep,](youtube.com/watch?v=hBy0dzUzHUk) by A Perfect Circle

The Ke-Han were pretty imaginative. They kept me in a dark cell, water dripping somwhere and little enough food. Far as I could figger, they kept asking me why Have couldn't fly - dumb as shit to ask that, when they'd brought her down in pieces and bits, my girl all shattered and ruined. I kept waking up out of nightmares, fever dreams, feeling that stomach-dropping moment when she'd gone down, when all I could feel was the impact and the freefall. 

My ribs were still broke and my back was ripped raw and bloody; fine hand with a whip they had, the Ke-Han. Fuckin' whoresons.

I held my silence, and could only hope if they had any of the others, they were doing the same like. Fuckin' sorry thing to wish, but it was the truth.

It was when they were pulling me from one room to another, ready for another little chat with the whip, I found out I wasn't the only one and I was doing pretty damn fine, all things considered. Because I knew Ivory's voice, I'd always known it, but for a moment I didn't recognize it at all, 'cause he was screaming like a ha'penny whore, and not for the pleasure of it either. I saw him, the door open - just a flash, his head arched back, voice raw and harsh. He had one leg and a bloody bandaged stump but that one leg, the toes were black and blistered up like a dead man's, and his knee was bent wrong, and there was a Ke-Han whoreson holding an axe balanced just so right above poor Ivory.

My favorite one-eyed Ke-Han shoved me and I missed the blow - but I heard it, a meaty thump and sharp crack and Ivory's voice cut off like a switch.

I couldn't breathe after that, and all I could think about, stomach rolling over, was how many more of us they had in bits and pieces. 

That night I had a nightmare I hadn't had in a long time - not for five years. I dreamed about Amery falling. I hadn't been on that raid - the one fuckin' time I hadn't flown with the whoreson, he'd seen fit to go and die on me. God, I'd blacked Raphael's eye and broke his nose for it. But though I hadn't seen it I kept dreaming about it, him falling and dying shattered on the mountainside. This time, it wasn't silent - this time, he screamed like Ivory.

I woke up aching all over and threw up what little water I had in me. 

Who else did they have? Not Ghislain, and not Luvander. Adamo? Balfour? Ace and Compagnon and Jeannot were all dead as dead.... I hadn't been able to really keep track of everyone else, just me and Have and flying until we'd been brought down.

I didn't find out about any others until a while later. Days. I was hanging by my wrists, back bloodied and burning from the latest whipping, when I heard Merritt. Little freckled fuckface and he wasn't crying, or screaming, just making these little soft awful noises like they were pulling out his heart.

For all I knew, they were, 'cause I couldn't see shit and by the time they cut me down again, the noises had stopped, and Merritt was nowhere to be seen. The air smelled like blood, though, and I didn't hold up much hope for that. But when they were shoving me back into the dark little hole they kept me in, they were dragging someone else out down the hall, and I knew by the pale skin and dark shadows on the underside he'd been dead for days: Niall with his left eye gashed open and all his fingernails gone, stiff as a fucking board and they were breaking his dead joints to get him out of the door.

I counted up on my fingers how many that made dead: at least five, six counting Merritt, and seven 'cause I didn't think Magoughin had made it after Chastity went down, not the way her wing had gone over. The fever made it hard to think - Have's wing, or something, had clipped me on the chest and it was getting rotten and I had the chills and the aches and was always thirsty. Ivory, I was pretty sure, had been good as dead with one leg gone and the other rotting off. That made...how many alive? Half of us dead, dead as Amery only with less mercy. 

I thought that and it made me laugh, because of Have.

I dreamed that night about Amery again, only it was good...too good, him talking quiet and the feel of his hands adding another braid in my hair. It had been a very, very long time since I'd dreamed that about him. 

Not too long after I woke up from that, shaking and dry-heaving on account of there being nothing left in me, fever-ache all through me, they opened up a trap-door and hauled me out into the sunlight.

Five of us alive.

It was a sorry-ass count.

But it was better than none, I thought.


End file.
